What’s the first thing that comes to-mind when you think of lust? Ok, the second thing. Five out of ten surveyed opined Love, Utopia, Semantics and Triple Sundae. The rest went for the titillating obvious.. After thumbing through encyclopaedias, the Upanishad, and interviewing diverse theologians, I concluded, the norm was to relegate sin to anything outside a moderate form of happiness.
That certainly explains the banishment of Adam and Eve. Had they just stuck to making mooney eyes at each other, they may not have needed the fashion statement of fig leaves. Nor would the poor serpent forever become the poster child for all evil or the apple – an embodiment of fear. Â
With the probability that Lust might be a bad thing with its place in the column under sin, let us talk about Chastity. Anyone that has attended an all girls school would guffaw and maintain that Chastity is but an all inclusive word for surreptitious and come hither body language. As civilisation evolved, men instead of pulling women by their hair or clubbing them into submissiveness, put a belt on their pelvic, locked it and pocketed the key. They then made merry with other men, assured that they had ensured a sole right to their possession. Meanwhile the chastised one’s maid in waiting whose beau was the neighbourhood locksmith had already duplicated the key which was stolen while the master slept in drunken stupor. Miss Chastity revelled in the clandestine glory of many suitors and declared the situation no harm no foul.Â
The debate at an impasse, Venus contemplated the goings on below and Zeus with a wrinkled brow looked at his notes and wondered if his directive for sins and virtues might not have interloped? In fact he went to seek wisdom from his wife Hera who snubbed him. Only after Zeus did fifty sit-ups and became a murga, did she deign to respond. She reminded him of his amorousness towards all women, mortal and immortal and scathingly told him that his chalking down lust as a sin was a form of misogyny and open to interpretation because of his own actions.Â
As the heated arguments continued, Moses threw down his two tablets, Atlas let the globe roll, shrugged his shoulders and stretched out, Aphrodite came up from the sea in the arms of Neptune and somewhere behind them floated a chastity belt. Chaos streamed in abundance and Hollywood, Bollywood, Alec Baldwin, and the many philanderers accompanied by ladies of the night regaled unheeded into debauchery. Lust smiled gleefully and screamed, ‘what price Chastity’?
Who am I to judge? Where indeed is the horizon? Who is John Galt?
